Last Day

Even on this cold, rainy Seattle June day, the giddy joy of summer was ringing through the hallways of The Boy’s elementary school this morning. As Little Grrl and I made the rounds handing out end-of-the-year teacher gifts, every student, teacher, and parent we crossed paths with had that “visions of sugarplums” look in their eyes.

“Last day of school!” I called out happily to a first grade girl as we passed in the hallway.

“But not the last day of school ever,” she added with a knowing smile.

True enough. Many more last days of school lay ahead for all of us – the last day of elementary school when we move on to lockers and gym uniforms; the last day of high school when the first rustlings of nest-leaving begin; the last day of college, turning in your last paper and your campus-issued phone.

But for me, there won’t be another last day quite like this one.

Little Grrl and I headed across the empty schoolyard in the rain. I’d planned to walk to one of the many neighborhood coffeehouses, but a sudden wave of nostalgia washed over me.

“Want to go to Irwin’s?” I asked.

Our old stomping ground. Of course she did.

We haven’t been there in a very long time, maybe not since The Boy changed schools. But that first year in kindergarten, when Little Grrl only had preschool two mornings a week and we’d drive past Irwin’s on our way home from dropping The Boy off at school every morning, we were regulars. It was just what we needed in those days.

Some coffeehouses are sleek and austere, all dark shades and sophistication. Irwin’s is of the crunchy-cozy variety. Sunny windows, butter-yellow walls, and creaky furniture; lattes in painted mugs and big, lopsided, healthy-looking baked goods. It’s not as toy-intensive as the more intentional child-friendly coffeehouses in town, but there’s a comfy little nook with plastic dinosaurs and a basket of well-worn board books. Laid back hipsters, stroller moms, aging hippies, and work-from-home laptoppers share the space peacefully, without attitude or raised eyebrows.

It used to be the perfect place to unwind after the morning rush to school. Little Grrl would gnaw a plain bagel in contemplative, cooperative silence while I took my gentle deep breaths over the latte foam, releasing all that anxiety from turning over The Boy and all his volatility to school for six eerily silent hours a day. When she’d finished her bagel, she’d dig through the basket to find her two favorite board books and I’d read them to her absentmindedly, one after the other. Aliens. Lions. Then the aliens again. And again.

So much of my three years at home with Little Grrl was all about her brother. That wasn’t what I’d hoped for at all. I thought those three years would be our special time, just like the special one-on-one time I’d had with The Boy before she was born.

And we did have plenty of good times together. There were trips to the zoo and her favorite pizza place, long mornings playing at friends’ houses while the moms had tea, loads of raucous fun and exploration at Teacher Tom’s cooperative preschool.

But there was a heaviness there, too. She’d sit quietly in her stroller while The Boy’s kindergarten teacher and I would talk about the day’s challenges, brainstorming solutions. The following year she’d be tugging at my arm, bored and anxious while The Boy’s reading teacher would air his many grievances. She’d sit sad-faced and still in the principal’s office while her brother wept and squirmed in my lap and I willed myself into strength and silent power, navigating the conversation, staying on top of it even as I was running out of options. She’d be hastily dropped off at this or that friend’s house while I rushed off to yet another school meeting.

“Mommy, do you still love him?” she asked me one night when I was tucking her in. “Even though he got….a detention?”

And last year, as I was scrambling to hunt down a school district official’s phone number, hoping he could help me sort out the final details of The Boy’s placement at his new school, Little Grrl proudly walked over to my desk and handed me a drawing of a human heart. “Look, Mommy. A heart!” she said, as if she’d found the solution. My own human heart was absolutely breaking.

Things got better, thankfully. The Boy finally landed at a school that meets his needs, and Little Grrl had a fantabulous final year of preschool. She seems to have come out of the previous years’ darkness none the worse for wear, but I guess we can’t really know for sure.

How strange to be back at Irwin’s together, just the two of us after all this time. At five-and-a-half she seems positively grown up compared to the other toddlers and preschoolers milling around. She chooses an asiago bagel instead of a plain one. She pours herself a glass of water and finds us a table while I pay the barista. She sways her head and taps her fingers to a Creedence Clearwater song. And when a toddler in a tutu bursts into tears and wailing, the expression on Little Grrl’s face matches the mild annoyance of a young woman with a laptop sitting near us. “Ugh, too much crying,” Little Grrl remarks under her breath.

“That’s just what it sounds like when you cry,” I tease, and she gives me a teenager sigh. Then the conversation moves on to Irwin’s many varieties of scones and our plans for the summer.

Like the first grader said, this isn’t the last day of school ever. But it is the last school day ever that Little Grrl and I will have the time and luxury to sit around our favorite coffeehouse talking about scones. In September she’ll be starting full-day kindergarten. And I’ll be starting a job.

I’ll be starting slowly at first, as a substitute special education teacher’s aide for the school district. But hopefully I’ll find a full-time special ed aide position before long. And the following year, with any luck, I’ll add part-time graduate school to the mix. I want to get my M.Ed. in special education and do this for real. I don’t know how any of these hopes will actually pan out. But right now, it feels like a calling.

And so ends the early childhood phase, the stay-at-home-mom phase. I have loved every minute of it… Baby Björns and Moby Wraps, tricycles and tire swings, stories and puzzles at the library, cooperative preschool, homemade play doh and shrinky dinks, hours upon hours at the Children’s Museum and Pacific Science Center.

I’ll miss it, but I think all three of us have been ready for it to be over for a while now. The Boy has an IEP and a supportive team at school. Little Grrl spends hours alone with her books and crayons these days; an independent spirit already. And when her brother is home, the two of them play together for hours on end. The Boy reads to her and puts on Simpsons DVDs for the two of them to watch. Sometimes they just sit around in their rooms, strumming Mr. Black’s guitars.

I used to yearn for free time to just sit around and relax. This year, I found myself using that free time to do more work – gardening, cleaning out the basement, volunteering in special ed inclusion classrooms at The Boy’s school. No doubt about it: It’s time to be moving on.

There are new challenges ahead. New ways for them to need me and new ways for me to support them. In some ways it will be better, in some ways not. But we’re on our path, and the path is turning in a new direction now.

Last day of school.

Love This Book

Gaaah. Just... Mm. I do wish I had something articulate to say about Alison Bechdel's new graphic memoir, something worthy of it beyond "You this read now" and maybe a few cartoon exclamation points for effect. Why do I love this book so much?

I just read a pain-in-the-ass review of Are You My Mother that whines about how it's not as "good" as Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel's first graphic memoir that unravels the intricate narrative of her closeted father's possible suicide and her own coming out story. And yes, of course, Fun Home is beyond amazing. But why would we want her to write that book twice?

Are You My Mother isn't some blockbuster sequel exposing even juicier family secrets. It's more like a very thoughtful commentary as the author absorbs her mother's reaction to Fun Home and examines their complicated relationship through a myriad of cultural and intellectual lenses – Virginia Woolf, Stephen Sondheim, A.A. Milne, psychologist Donald Winnicott, The Drama of the Gifted Child.

It's introspective. Über meta. Cerebral-licious. All of my favorite flavors. I've been a huge fan of Alison Bechdel for years, but this is the first time I've ever wanted to climb into the pages and give her a hug. Several hugs. Sigh.

Okay...I'm just going to immerse myself in this book, then re-immerse myself in Fun Home again, and then maybe re-read the entire Dykes to Watch Out For canon for good measure. See you at the library.

Updated to add:  I'm realizing now that the reviewer unwittingly made himself the Charles Tansley to Bechdel's Lily Briscoe, which is kind of perfect, really. Maybe after I'm done re-reading the Bechdel canon I'll re-read To the Lighthouse...

What's Love Got To Do With It

I used to walk around like this all the time. Yearning. Missing. Feeling the loss of something, something I’d never truly had in the first place. The obvious assumption in those days was romantic love, simply because that was the piece that typically wasn’t there. There was always some impossible crush, some recently departed boyfriend, some long-distance non-relationship holding me at arm’s length.

But even when there was an attentive paramour, there were cracks and corners for The Yearn to come rushing in. Maybe he was leaving soon. Or we didn’t quite understand each other. Sometimes the relationship itself had become pure tedium; a tired struggle to reach some vague nirvana that was never quite forthcoming.

I knew better, but knowing better doesn’t do you a damn bit of good, really. Will power and sober common sense have little jurisdiction over the wild stampede of Must Have Love. When the heart just yearns, they tend to get out of its way. Let her get it out of her system.

Still, for whatever it was worth, I knew better. My absurd romantic ventures happened within smirking, self-aware air quotes. I never dreamed of the material trappings of couplehood; weddings, babies, and so forth. I just wanted the embodiment of wild, poetic good mood swings. I wanted to recapture childhood kite-flying in a cornfield; waterfalls and 1970’s jazz-fluted Sesame Street animations. I wanted adventure, but also to feel treasured and nested and safe.



By the time I actually met a real live person worthy of imposing a lifetime of this bullshit onto, I’d lived through most of my 20’s. The 30’s were all about coming down to earth, settling in and learning how to actually conduct a functional relationship with a live human being for more than a year or two.

It was still dreamy, of course, but over time the dreams became firmly rooted in our joint reality – job hunting, home improvement, doctors appointments, red eye flights back east, waiting at bus stops in the rain. And babies…in all their heartbreaking, sleepless, bodily-fluid-spewing, marriage-overhauling glory. Preschool financial aid forms. Museum membership forms. Those “So Just How Autistic Is Your Child?” evaluation forms. (Remember when filling in bubbles with a pencil meant taking the GRE?)

And gradually, through all of that, we find ourselves simply married, simply a family. This is love in its purest, most earthy sense. This is farmers market love. Organic. The real deal.



Still, even with all the love and security and happiness…the old habit of Yearn still floats above it. Something still feels at large; in need of being sought.

And I don’t mean that in a crass, red-Porsche-driving comb-over midlife crisis guy, leave-him-for-your-secretary way. It’s not the least bit related to actual infidelity. To mistake it for some call to Madame Bovary action would be missing the point entirely.

It’s not so much yearning for romantic love as it is for romantic fulfillment. It wants Santa Claus. Puff the Magic Dragon. It seeks joy in a purely nebulous, unattainable sense. Embodiment brings it down to earth and essentially kills it, or scatters it elsewhere, back to the elusive zone.

So, basically, The Yearn is an end unto itself. It’s a little wistful, a little thrilling. There’s nothing, really, to be sought that I don’t already have. It’s just that the best of it lurks in hard-to-reach corners, and you can’t really pin it down in a photo album or a vacation or a job or even in your bed. It’s vapor. Its sheer lack of physical presence feels an awful lot like a void, but it’s not meant to be embodied. It’s simply meant to be felt.

There’s nothing truly missing here. There has to be space. There has to be loneliness and uncertainty from time to time. Be in it. It won’t hurt you. And it doesn’t mean you’re truly alone.

 

When We Can’t Write

It would be easy enough to blame this on the Big Bad Public School System…way too easy, like, lazy-easy. Besides, The Boy’s flat-out aversion to all things writing and drawing started at least a year before kindergarten. It’s more subtle and complicated than that.

The Boy could write his entire name when he was three. At four he’d started guess-and-go spelling in preschool without any prompting at all from his teacher. He just wanted to make some signs to add to the science experiment.



And for years, he used to dictate “books” to Mr. Black. All kinds of books. Non-fiction like What Sea Creatures Eat and The Human Body Encyclopedia. Imaginary non-fiction like The Madagascar Bullet Train. A fictional series inspired by the It’s Not a Box books like It’s Not a Car. Fan fic like Lego Agents Chapter Book, Bionicle Chapter Book, Power Miners Chapter Book…you get the idea.

But during his pre-K year of preschool, things changed. I don’t think he picked up a pencil or crayon in class the entire year. There was a sign-in sheet where children were welcome, but not required, to write their names every morning upon arrival. He always declined. There was a writing and drawing station with an abundance of art and office supplies where children could draw and write in their journals, dictate a story or letter to an adult, scribble “notes” to each other. At the end of the school year, The Boy’s journal came home entirely empty. It looked like it had never even been opened.

He still enjoyed dictating books to Mr. Black. But as I look through the collection now, I notice something unusual that didn’t strike me as unusual at the time. Mr. Black did most of the drawings, too. The Boy told him what to draw, but rarely picked up a crayon himself. The pen drawings Mr. Black did aren’t colored in. It was all about the storytelling process for him; not the physical act of writing and drawing.

By kindergarten, even dictation was like pulling teeth. He’d completely shut down. During free writing-and-drawing time he’d be at a loss, choosing to do nothing or attempting something and melting down when it didn’t come out the way he’d envisioned. Where once he’d happily crayoned his own name, he now refused because he couldn’t make a perfect first letter of his name.

Perhaps the pre-K year would have been a good time to start pursuing OT instead of plodding through red tape for two years to see if he’d qualify for free services through the school district (shocker – he didn’t). But when we did finally take him to private OT, handwriting turned out to be less of an issue than we’d expected. He had some minor challenges, but he did have the physical capability.

What, then? How would I figure this out? I’m not an OT myself. I’m not a psychologist. I don’t have degrees in early childhood education or special education.

But I do have an awful lot of experience being a frustrated writer.

Like The Boy, I showed a lot of early promise. But I didn’t hit my wall until years later, taking writing workshops in college. Suddenly faced with a roomful of writing peers and a professor teaching the very thing I loved most of all; suddenly given the opportunity to just write and have it taken seriously…I choked. My drive, my confidence, my inspiration all just drained right out of me and slipped through the floor.

Eventually I figured out what each professor was looking for and managed to please them. Playwriting = David Mamet-ish dialogue. Poetry = haiku without counting syllables. Fiction = anything not set in a dorm room. I played along and sometimes managed to trick myself into thinking I was a pretty good writer.

But the process was not my friend. The process was kind of a joke, actually. I had nothing to tell. Any story of mine that was really worth telling was in process itself; being actually lived at the moment. I had no grasp on it. No perspective. It was all about the boyfriends, which is enthralling to live but about the deadliest, most tedious thing to actually read. And I knew it. So I censored myself, picked the safe parts to spin into competent stories, kept the real stuff confined to my journal, and eventually went on to other pursuits.

I know it’s ridiculous, maybe even unfair, to compare my dippy white chick college story to The Boy’s very real struggle with Aspergers. Or…am I onto something, here? Our stories do have a basic thread in common. Our reach exceeds our grasp. Our actual work doesn’t even come close to reflecting the depths and volumes of fabulous notions we hold in our imaginations. We can’t…express. We can’t accurately translate the thoughts to the page.

How did I finally learn to write? Here and there, in bits and pieces. A college non-fiction workshop where I learned that tightening prose is a thing. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Lorrie Moore’s short stories. A particularly good fiction workshop in Philly and killer grammar classes at a University of Washington tech writing program. And the Internet.

Yes, the Internet. I spent my earliest, somewhat isolated years of stay-at-home parenting finding like-minded new parents online and carrying on intelligent “conversations” with them – not just about parenting but about relationships, books and films, politics, gay and transgender rights, racism, religion, current events, sex. Feelings and the written word had never been more linked for me. We generally regard the Internet as a huge waste of time, but for me it turned out to be valuable writing practice. When I’d gotten everything I could out of the message board life, I started this blog.

How is The Boy finally learning to write? Well…by writing, I think. With extra help, with accommodations, but basically just by writing. By picking up the rules and inspiration gradually, in fits and starts. By learning about notes and first drafts and freewriting, and ever so slightly loosening his grip on his perfectionism. He is learning the way we all learn – by slogging through the deadly process of it, practicing, sucking at it, practicing some more, realizing we don’t suck as much as we thought. The best, most helpful thing a teacher has ever said to me was simply “He can do this.” And he can.

Sometimes it takes a while to engage him in the task, especially if it’s something unfamiliar. But once he’s there, he’s got a lot of thoughts and wants to express them. “You don’t need to be here,” he’ll tell me as he starts scratching it down on the paper. He can do this. And the more familiar he becomes with the whole business of translating thoughts into words and then writing the actual words, the less objectionable the task becomes.

What I didn’t fully understand about The Boy in the preschool days is that he needs to be very familiar with something in order to feel comfortable with it. Left to his own devices, he’s extremely disinclined to branch out – even if it’s something he’s ready and yearning to do, like take the training wheels off his bike.

The Boy approaches most tasks with either (a) the belief that he won’t be able to do it and extreme resistance, or (b) the belief that he will be AWESOME at it, followed by disappointment in falling short of his own expectations, followed by….extreme resistance. It’s hard to know when it’s time to let him put it aside or encourage him to keep trying. But I’m getting better at it. Because I keep trying, too.

Preschool Now is Over

I knew this was coming. Since September, I’ve been watching the kindergarteners at The Boy’s school, imagining her in their place. Little Grrl is every bit as much of a handful as The Boy in completely different ways, but I’ve always felt that public school K would be a nice fit for her. She digs all that sitting-still/numbers-and-letters stuff. And while we’ve been very mindful of letting her enjoy the preschool years without cramming pedantics down her throat, The Boy has taken a rather Tiger Mom-ish approach to teaching his sister reading and math. (Which may explain why one of the first words she can read is “beer.” Good one, son.)

So, yes, I feel well prepared to happily move on to the next step. Both kids in elementary school, me pursuing a new career in special education. Freedom! A chance to put my natural talents to work outside the home! Sweet, sweet dual income household! This is all good stuff. I am ready!

Well…ready to move on. But ready to move away? Ready to leave the SAHM life behind? Ready to say goodbye to the co-op preschool I’ve attended alongside my children for the last seven years? Hmm.

Co-op preschool, man. It’s not what you think. I never, in a million years, would have ever imagined my cheerfully misanthropic self even participating in a co-op preschool, let alone becoming so heavily involved to the point where it actually feels like a college graduation of sorts now that it’s ending. But here we are.

Seven years. That was longer than college (sometimes with twice the drama). And while I never lost my cynical edge; while I never morphed into whatever ill-informed notion of a stereotype I feared I’d become…I have lost a certain sense of irony about the whole thing. I care. I simply care.

We started in a Toddlers program on a community college campus, one morning a week. The Boy was 17 months old in a class of about twenty other one-year-olds. And it was magical. Absolutely dreamy. Many of us were first-time parents. This was the first time we’d ever seen our little guys all together in a “school” context. But there they were, toddling from station to station, painting at easels, playing music together, sitting side by side at a long table having snack.

We parents were charmed. Well…when we weren’t freaking out over all the little parenting challenges that came our way. Maybe that’s what made it so easy to bond with each other. We’d meet for playdates at each other’s houses, outings in child-friendly coffeehouses and library story hours, the occasional parents’ night out.

There were classes for the parents, too. That’s where I first learned about concepts and methods that would become invaluable to me as The Boy blossomed into his full-blown Aspergian glory. Temperaments. Positive discipline. Emotional intelligence. How to manage conflicts and deal with disappointment. Not only were we learning these things, but we could put them into practice instantly in the classroom – not just with our own children, but with 20 or so, all with different strengths and challenges.

As the children got older, more and more parents moved them into full-time daycare or drop-off preschool. The Boy and I stayed. For one thing, the price was right. And as his challenges became more pronounced, it became clear that drop-off simply wasn’t going to work for us. (The two daycares I’d attempted with him didn’t work out at all. One actually kicked him out for crying too much. “This is a happy place,” they explained.)

But I also loved the parent education component and the sense of community. I loved that when The Boy went through his biting phase at age 2, the teacher addressed it with such respect and empathy, giving all the parents the tools to keep his classmates safe while not stigmatizing The Boy for the behavior. I loved how everyone brought casseroles and Christmas cookies to our home when Little Grrl was born. I loved watching The Boy make his first friends, and becoming friends with his friends’ moms.

There were challenges too, of course. I expect we would have run into them at any preschool or daycare, what with The Boy’s as-yet-undiagnosed Aspergers coupled with the general wildness of ages 2-5. Getting yelled at by a cranky dad on the playground, being told “He should be kicked out of school!” was an all-time low. But after that happened, I drove straight to a classmate’s house to pick up Little Grrl from her playdate, where I had not one, but two shoulders to cry on in the kitchen while our kids played upstairs. It was tough slogging through the rest of that school year, but I had a great support system to help me do it.

And then, it was time for Little Grrl to start preschool. I was ready for a change of scenery. Lucky for us, there are over 40 co-op preschools to choose from all over North Seattle, operating under the umbrella of the community college’s parent education program. Admission is by lottery alone. We’d been lucky enough to get The Boy into a preschool close to our home. The only other one that was sort of nearby was wildly popular, headed up by Seattle’s own rock-star-meets-Mr.-Rogers, Teacher Tom. I’d hoped to send The Boy there, actually, but we ended up dead last on the wait list. I figured we had no chance, but I put Little Grrl’s name in the running anyway and hoped for the best.

Reader, we got in. At the time I was so relieved, so grateful for a fresh start at a new preschool. But it was so much more than that. How to even explain it?

I’m reluctant to sing Teacher Tom’s praises here…not because he doesn’t deserve it, but because he’s already got such an adoring chorus of loyal parents and blog readers that my voice feels superfluous and insignificant among them. Hollow. Besides, I don’t really see myself as a “fan.” I’ve held on to just enough of the old cheerful misanthropy to resolve that I simply don’t do “fan.”

Tom, though. There’s something about him that inspires that reaction in spite of my knowing-better self. Even that first time I toured his preschool, when The Boy wasn’t even two yet, I felt so captivated by it all. It was one of those rare brilliantly sunny Northwest winter days. The snow-capped Olympic mountain range was in full view, and sunlight poured through the classroom windows.

I’d been trying to conceive a second child at the time and was drinking dangerous volumes of fertility tea, so maybe that’s to blame for my reaction when I first saw the teacher himself…but I was absolutely struck by his presence. It was Beatlemania. Elvis. Freaking Kurt Cobain. It was downright embarrassing, is what it was. I worried that if we ended up going to school there I’d be too school-girlishly distracted to be of any use to anyone. But I fell asleep that night feeling absolutely euphoric, remembering the tree leaves painted on the ceiling and the tricycle on the wall.

Meeting Tom in person a few years later was a lot more down-to-earth, thankfully. But there was still something instantly infectious about the guy. Even when you’re up to your elbows in tempera paint or picking dried glue out of your eyebrows…you’re smiling. You’re happy to be there.

Little Grrl had a fabulous time, of course. She made some good friends, enjoyed lots of wacky art and science projects, and will act in her very first play next week. But what a bizarre experience, doing co-op preschool over again with a school-friendly child. What a trip. On the one hand, it was a lot more relaxing this second time around. She never had a biting phase, or a pushing phase. The closest she ever came to pissing anyone off was during her never-getting-off-the-swing phase. (Still ongoing, I’m afraid.)

But it was uncomfortable, too. I felt like I’d somehow infiltrated enemy lines disguised as a “normal” parent of a “normal” kid. And, indeed, I did find out how the other half lives – the half that doesn’t much care for loud, anxiety-prone, Aspergersish boys like my son. The half that fears boys like mine; regards them and their parents with suspicion. The half that probably would have supported that dad who yelled at me years ago.

But they didn’t know about any of that. They only knew The Boy through my eyes, through my spin. Would they have still liked me and respected me if they’d known him first-hand at ages 1-5? I’d like to think so. But who knows.

I’m not the only one, though. There are other moms like me at this preschool and our old one who are Sherpa-ing their quirky-anxious children through the complicated world of school and friends. What I love the absolute best about co-op is how it’s allowed us all to come together and support each other with very little pretense. We can admit imperfection to each other. We can talk for hours in each other’s kitchens, vent, advise, encourage, laugh, bang our heads in frustration, have another cup of tea. I can’t even imagine where I’d be without these friendships, these conversations.

And now…it’s almost over. The friendships will last, I’m sure. But, just like college graduation, we’re moving on to a “real world” of sorts. Setting out on our own, going back to work, sending our kids off to more traditional schools where we only see our fellow parents at drop-off and pick-up time, if we see them at all.

But, like I said…I’m ready to move on. There are good things ahead. I will always remember these preschool years with love and fondness. I still can’t quite believe it’s almost over. But here we are.


What the hell, it’s a graduation of sorts, right?

What Does “Autism Awareness” Look Like?

April is Autism Awareness Month and everybody’s got something to say, so I guess I’ll chime in too. This will be pretty simple, actually. I’m not going to ask you to “light it up blue,” or read up on the latest conspiracy theories about autism’s rise, or watch Temple Grandin (although that is a pretty fabulous movie). All I really need anybody to do – this month and every month, really – is to simply be aware of autism.

And, okay, something a little more complicated after all: Be aware of our own very deeply engrained ignorance, prejudice, and misconceptions about autism. Be aware that we may think we know…but we don’t. We don’t know much of anything.

Yes, “we.” I’m a proud Aspergers parent myself and half the time I barely have a freaking clue. I try to second-guess and get it wrong (way wrong). I just plain forget sometimes that The Boy doesn’t like surprises – even really good ones. I forget that no matter whose birthday it is, he will always, always blow out the candles before we’re done singing “Happy Birthday” because he can’t stand the intense auditory sensation of a roomful of mixed-key singing. Sometimes I acquiesce to strangers out of meaningless politeness instead of sticking up for him. Sometimes I lose patience with him even when I know better.

But I have to forgive myself and keep trying to do better. Aspergers parenting can be a counterintuitive endeavor. And if that weren’t challenging enough, most of us adults have a lifetime of misinformation and prejudice to overcome.

We grew up in a time when “retarded” was a perfectly acceptable pejorative. We went to school in mostly non-mainstreamed classrooms and, as far as we knew, there was no such thing as an Aspergers diagnosis. There was a boy in my small rural elementary school who, in retrospect, was clearly on the spectrum. He cried and hit and grabbed the scissors out of our hands. He’d melt down at the slightest provocation. We all came to regard him as the “bad” kid in our class. Even me. I was painfully shy and had my own issues going on, but it felt good to feel superior to someone.

In third grade, our teacher lost all patience with him and sent him to the principal’s office to be paddled. We could hear him wailing and screaming all the way down the hall and around the corner. It was awful. But somehow, we rationalized that he must have deserved it. An adult said so.

I was reliving that moment a lot when The Boy was younger. How awful it was to be on the other side of that situation, to watch his classmates sitting stoically, hurt and puzzled while The Boy pushed or grabbed or wailed his way through some perceived injustice or other. At least we live in a state where corporal punishment is prohibited in schools. But have we evolved much further than that?

Right now, right here in touchy-feely lefty-loosey Seattle, elementary school special ed students are getting detention, and even suspension, because their behavior is routinely mistaken for defiance. It’s happened to The Boy. It’s happened to a lot of special ed families I know, autism or otherwise. When our children aren't proactively well-supported, those dominos go down pretty fast. They may feel extremely threatened and panicked and shift into “fight or flight” mode. What does that look like? Tantrums. Hitting. Spitting. Saying rude or hurtful things. Biting. Running away.

We adults have a lot of baggage around those behaviors. We feel disrespected. We feel embarrassed. We feel our darkest insecurities being summoned by our inability to control the situation. Whatever deep-seated, subconscious childhood beliefs we may have about “bad” kids are unearthed. We feel like kids ourselves, being pushed around on the playground. We feel afraid. And sometimes, under the weight of all that baggage, we make exactly the wrong choice and only make things worse.

It’s a natural human impulse, I think, to want to make someone feel bad for making us feel bad. That’s basically what punishment is. It’s not so much about teaching positive behaviors; it’s about making someone feel the weight of the “bad” thing they’ve done and suffer like we suffered. And maybe there’s a time and a place for that version of discipline. But this isn’t it.

We need to recognize our baggage for what it is, and we need to challenge it. When The Boy blows out the candles on someone else’s cake because he can’t stand the “Happy Birthday” song, even I think he’s being an asshole. But that assumption is fundamentally wrong. I can teach him better coping skills for being in a noisy room. But I can’t attach a moral judgment to his lack of coping skills. And neither should anybody else.

I guess what I’m saying is: What if we just assumed that a child is behaving badly not because he’s a jerk who needs to be put in his place, but because he has real challenges and needs a different approach? If we must jump to conclusions, let’s try jumping to an empathetic one. Let’s remember that the dominant culture decides what “social” and “normal” should be, but that doesn’t make expected behaviors come any more naturally to children on the autism spectrum. They're working very hard just to show up and be in the room with everyone else.

And instead of assuming the parents don’t know or don’t care, consider the possibility that we do know and care; that the misbehavior breaks our hearts; that we do everything we can to help our kids learn to function within the parameters of “normal” but it doesn’t happen overnight; that we can barely take a step without weighing the implications. This tends to drain our energy for faking shock and remorse over our children’s every autistic move in public. But for Zod’s sake, it doesn’t mean we don’t care.

Be a little patient. Be a little forgiving. Remember that you don’t really know. Nobody does.

And that, for me, is what autism awareness looks like.

Eight

This is new territory for me. I think I like it.

My sweet little babies and toddlers have become a lively pair of precocious, funny, opinionated, gloriously independent children. They can set up a board game and play it together, put on their own episodes of Word Girl and Pokemon (and turn the TV off when it’s over), disappear into their world of imaginative play for hours at a time. The Boy reads Harry Potter while Little Grrl pores over books at her desk, making up stories to go with the illustrations. There is an elaborate workstation of crafts and coloring. There is a basement full of Legos.

And tomorrow, The Boy turns eight.

Eight was kind of a milestone for me as a girl. That’s when I remember really coming into my own – not just as a child, but as the person I would grow up to be. I loved writing, biking, Girl Scouts, Roald Dahl books, and immersing myself in my own world of imagination. I started really seeing and feeling things – full-hearted joy, nostalgia, a deeper appreciation of music, dreamy plans for my future (in which I hoped to live in New York City and drive a baby blue Pinto with its own CB radio).

This won’t necessarily be The Boy’s experience of eight. But he’s coming into his own, too. He carries himself like an older child, more confident and sure of the way. He politely questions my logic. His “helping” around the house is actually helpful. Every Thursday, he curls up to watch Community with me, just like I used to watch Rhoda with my mom. Maybe Abed Nadir can be his Rhoda Morgenstern. Who knows.

I will always love the baby-and-toddler years, of course. They were sweet and poignant and so much fun. They brought out strengths in me I never knew I had. But I love the pensive-yet-hilarious young people living in my house today. I can’t wait to see who they become.

Come to think of it, I can’t wait to see who I become in this new phase of parenthood. Maybe there’s hope for that baby blue Pinto yet…